BlackBerry is reportedly getting back into tablets

New reports have suggested that BlackBerry is actively working on a new tablet device, years after the debut of its first slate – the PlayBook.

Both BlackBerry and tablet sales are slowly dying, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred either company nor product segment from what latest reports allege; that the Canadian company is actively working on a new, Android-based tablet devce.

The move is an interesting one that is now gaining traction after BlackBerry CEO John Chen quipped to investors that consumers “may soon see a BlackBerry tablet.”

For those old enough to have lived through the BlackBerry Renaissance here in South Africa, the PlayBook – the company’s first and only slate – might well come to mind. However, a visible problem for the company is that it no longer manufactures its own devices.

Presently, a trio of manufacturers are licensed to produce BlackBerry devices; TCL Communications, Otiemus, and BB Merah Putih. Chen neglected to mention which manufacturer could take onus of manufacturing responsibilities in conversation with Wall Street forecasters during the release of the company’s fourth quarter earnings report.

On the subject, Chen did comment that “One of our partners are (sic) very excited to build a tablet based on Android, and so they wanted us to give them the portfolio rights to do that. I’m interested to do that because I’m going to get royalties for every tablet they ship. I will just leave it at that, and it’s not even that, we have to curate it, we have to do a lot of things on with it, so it’s not a 100% committed thing but it’s gonna come from our partners and BlackBerry will only receive royalty but it’s using our software and we do the QA and portfolio management, so I hope that clarifies that point.”